


Noctis

by Justaparsec94



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Brothers, Character Death, Gen, Nightmares, Post-Order 66, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Rex and Wolffe need a hug, so many feelings, the clones deserved better
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:28:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24619099
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Justaparsec94/pseuds/Justaparsec94
Summary: The nightmares may be over for some but for Rex and Wolffe they never end.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 39





	Noctis

The room is so dark that Rex cannot make out anything around him. It’s as if all light has been sucked from the room, the space suffocating him with blackness. Rex takes a deep breath but even that is hard to do, he feels as if he’s drowning in the darkness, his lungs struggling to pull in air.

_“You could have stopped this”_

It’s a familiar voice, one that has him spinning on the spot to locate the owner, but he still can’t see anything. It’s almost as if the voice had come from every direction.

_“You could have stopped this, but you did nothing. You let me die”_

“NO!” Rex shouts, reaching up to cover his ears, hoping to block out the sound. He knows who is speaking to him. He could never forget that voice.

_“All of those men died because you did nothing. You let our brothers die”_

Rex cries out in pain, falling to his knees as he clutches his head, trying desperately to get the voice to stop, “Please, I’m sorry”

_“It’s your fault, Rex. You let me die and you let our brothers die too”_

“NO!” Rex shouts, sitting up so suddenly on his small cot that he nearly falls right off of it. It takes minutes for his breathing to calm and for him to remember where he is. He’s safe, or as safe as anyone can be these days, the voice isn’t real. Not anymore anyway.

Rex groans as he covers his face with his hands, raking his fingers over his newly shaved head. His blonde hair is long gone in an attempt to make himself less recognizable to the Empire. He knows it’s not enough if someone was really intent on finding him, but he figures that anything helps. Captain Rex may have been officially listed as KIA, but a deserter clone is still worth enough to a desperate bounty hunter.

Rex sighs once more before pulling his head up, his amber eyes surveying the small tent around him. Nothing is out of place, everything is as it should be, but the dream has left him shaken and he knows he won’t be able to sleep again tonight.

The night air is cool against his skin as he steps out of the tent. The stillness of this particular backwater planet would be peaceful if he wasn’t still riled up from his dream. It's one that he has become familiar with but the feeling it leaves behind is something he is certain he will never get used to.

“Rough night?” A voice speaks suddenly causing Rex to jump. He whirls around to the source, the familiarity of the situation causing him further unease.

Wolffe is looking at him knowingly as he steps out from beneath the shadow of some nearby trees. It’s the perfect cover and precisely why they had chosen to make camp in this spot.

Rex lets out a deep breath, shaking his head and closing his eyes momentarily. They’ve been together long enough that Wolffe knows exactly why Rex is awake in the middle of the night, it’s the same reason why Wolffe is lurking in shadows at exactly the same time.

“You want to talk about it?” Wolffe asks in that deep, gruff voice that Rex has grown so used to.

“No” Rex responds instantly. It’s a trained response. Good soldiers don’t talk about their feelings. At least, that is what he used to believe. He’s fairly certain that Rex died a long time ago, but the habit is still hard to shake.

Wolffe shrugs, taking his answer for what it is and moves away from him. Rex watches as he sits down next to where their campfire had burned hours earlier before joining him. The two clones sit in silence for what feels like hours, each lost in their thoughts and staring blankly off into the space around them. It’s both peaceful and nerve-racking for Rex. The dream has left him feeling like an imposter in his own skin, that familiar voice still ringing in his head, tormenting him.

“Fives” he finds himself saying before he can stop himself.

Wolffe’s eyes snap towards him instantly, both cybernetic and identical amber narrowing at the name that had suddenly slipped past Rex’s lips, “What about him?”

“I keep hearing him in my sleep” Rex replies, his voice weak as the feelings he had come to associate with Fives rush to the surface.

Wolffe nods in understanding, his expression smoothing out into something that could almost be considered concern if you knew the former commander well enough. Rex knows he understands, he knows that Wolffe hears voices of his own. Worse than Rex, and he is pretty sure that Wolffe’s voices follow him even when he is awake.

The two are quiet for another long moment before Rex speaks again. Now that he’s started, he doesn’t want to stop. He just wants one other person in his galaxy to understand what he’s going through, and maybe tell him that Fives is wrong, that it’s not his fault.

“He blames me for what happened”

Wolffe is looking at him again through narrowed eyes, “Why?”

“Because I knew, or at least I knew something wasn’t right about his death. But I didn’t do anything about it! If I had listened or dug a little deeper, I could have saved more brothers. I could have saved Jesse…Kix…Cody. Maybe even the Jedi. Kriff, even the Republic itself” His voice had steadily risen in pitch as he spoke and suddenly, he’s panting, his chest tightening as he struggles to pull in air.

Wolffe is quiet for a long moment, simply staring at him before he speaks, “You did what you could. More than anyone else, really”

Rex wants to believe him, wants to with everything he has but every time he closes his eyes, all he can see is the look in Fives’ matching eyes as he took his last breath. Every time he closes his eyes, he sees Jesse’s helmet hanging as a permanent marker above his grave.

“Commander Tano is alive because of you” Rex can hear the undercurrent of remorse in Wolffe’s voice, he knows that the commander wishes the same could have been said for his own Jedi general.

Rex shakes his head, “She would have survived without me”

Wolffe shrugs, never one to put up with someone else being stubborn, “Maybe, maybe not. But I don’t think either of you would have made it if you hadn’t done what you did after Fives’ death. You couldn’t have known how deep this ran. If you had looked deeper into it, you would have ended up just like him”

Logically, he knows Wolffe is right, but he can’t stop all of the ‘what ifs’ that run through his head, at least, not yet anyway. Maybe in time he will be able to see past this. 

“Do you ever sleep anymore?” Rex asks without looking over at Wolffe. He already knows the answer but he needs to turn the attention away from himself, if only for a moment. Something to take his mind off of his dreams.

“Do we have to talk about this?” Wolffe responds gruffly. Rex could see he had directed his intense gaze toward him out of the corner of his eye, so he finally turned his head to look at his brother.

“No” Rex replies, “But we can if you want”

Wolffe narrows his eyes even more and his frown deepens, on any other clone it would have been a look of pure annoyance, but for Wolffe, it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Rex knows him well enough to know he isn’t truly annoyed. Wolffe is quiet for a long moment before shaking his head and turning his gaze back towards the dark line of trees near them.

He wasn’t ready to talk. Rex wasn’t sure that he would ever be ready to talk. The Kaminoan’s had insisted that such weakness had been bred out of them, but Rex knew it was there. That didn’t make it any easier to acknowledge it. Like Rex, Wolffe had lost so much more than just his brothers. They had lost everything.

“It was all a lie,” Wolffe says suddenly, his voice is so quiet that Rex almost misses it.

“What was?”

“Everything,” Wolffe says as he looks back over at him, “All of it. The Republic, the Jedi, even us. Our existence was a lie”

He’s right. Rex has lost count of the number of nights he’s been kept awake by the same thoughts. How much pain he had been in during those first few days after the fall of the Republic. Suddenly, every single thing he had thought he had known had been ripped away from him, his brothers were dead or worse, the Jedi were gone, killed by the soldiers who were supposed to be loyal to them. He had been created for one purpose in mind, to destroy the very thing he had thought he had been fighting for. In the end, he was no better than the droids he had been created to fight. Fives had been right, and thousands had died because no one had listened to him.

“Fives was right,” Rex says softly as he runs a hand over his scalp once more. He’s still not used to the sensation, in a way, it’s soothing.

“He was” Wolffe agrees, his tone as soft as it ever was, “And he died because of it”

Rex looks out across towards the trees surrounding them, they’re easier to see now that the sky is beginning to lighten. They’ve been out here for hours, but it’s only felt like minutes.

“What do we do?” Wolffe asks him, “How do we ever get past this?”

Rex shakes his head before looking back at his brother, “I don’t know. I’m not sure we truly can”

The two sit in silence for another long moment before Rex speaks again, “But we can’t give up. We were bred to fight, and yeah, maybe our lives were a lie. But now we have a choice, we can choose to fight for something we believe in”

“And what do you believe in now?” Wolffe asks, his tone betraying his skepticism.

Rex fixes the former commander with a hard stare, “I believe that there is still good in this galaxy, that there is still hope. There is something worth fighting for. I know there are other brothers out there who need us, maybe we can start with them. We can’t let Fives’ death be for nothing. We’re still here, we can still do some good and I think we should try”

Wolffe narrows his eyes, Rex knows he’s still skeptical. If Wolffe had his way they would probably disappear on some backwater planet like this one and never be seen or heard from again. He was paranoid that something terrible was going to happen to them, that one day the Jedi would get revenge, even though most, if not all, were now dead.

“I think your wires got crossed when Commander Tano pulled out that chip” Wolffe grumbles, “But, fine. You’re right. As long as there are brothers out there, we have something to fight for. Each other”

A small grin breaks out on Rex’s face. He can’t remember the last time he actually smiled at something. Most likely it was back on Mandalore with Commander Tano.

“Well, Wolffe old boy. When should we start?”

**Author's Note:**

> There's really no point to this. I just really love these two and I wish we had learned more about how they found one another after Order-66.


End file.
